Chapter 5

Now that the shadow was lifted from the small household in Bethsaida, it took on an unaccustomed brightness, for Hannah was gifted with a quiet drollery and an inexhaustible good humour refreshing to the brothers who had found so little to amuse them in their parental home. Andrew, sober and taciturn, allowed many a quip to pass unnoticed, though he could be depended upon to give an amiable, bewildered smile. Simon’s big, booming laugh, on an open-windowed summer evening, could be heard a long way off. Near neighbours often wondered, rather testily, what manner of entertainment could produce such hilarity. It was the general opinion of the conservatives in that part of the town that the Big Fisherman had added little to the gentility of Bethsaida.

But though they regarded Simon with scant respect, there was one thing about him that stirred their curiosity—and their envy too. He seemed to be on friendly terms with David, the wealthy, haughty Sadducee. Up the cross-street which bounded Hannah’s property on the north side and rose gently for a quarter-mile to the east, lay the spacious grounds and imposing old mansion of the eminent Zadok family, now reduced in numbers to a pair of unmarried, middle-aged aristocrats and a score of elderly servants.

Old Zadok, the departed grandfather of David and Deborah, had held himself aloof from the town; nor had Bethsaida made any effort to intrude upon his lofty isolation, for he was a Sadducee, the only Sadducee in all that region, and if he wanted to live in seclusion Bethsaida was willing he should do so, the Sadducees being of a cynical, supercilious sect that affected a social superiority. Nor was that all that ailed old Zadok and the Sadducees, in the opinion of Bethsaida. It was a known fact that he hated the government of Galilee and had been heard to speak scornfully of Antipas the Tetrarch. It was a wonder he hadn’t got into trouble about that. Of course he paid exorbitant taxes. Rich men who paid large taxes might be able to speak their minds more recklessly than poor people, who for the same indiscretion could be clapped in jail. Maybe it was better not to have much to do with the Zadoks or any other Sadducee.

Just why David had retained his residence at the old palace on the hill was a mystery, for until his recent retirement he was seldom at home. Maybe it was the commanding view of the lake that had held him and brought him back for his summers. Surely it was inconvenient for him to have lived there during his active life, for his law practice was in Caesarea and the only local client he served was Jairus, whose large estate lay in the foothills above Capernaum.

Now David, it seemed, was home to stay; and on fair days it was his habit to stroll slowly down the hill, with bent head, apparently in deep meditation. Persons meeting him did not venture to speak, nor did he lift his eyes. Doubtless he was too busy with his own thoughts to take any account of them.

It was not surprising, therefore, that Hannah’s neighbours should have been amazed the first time David stopped beside her white picket fence to engage the Big Fisherman in what seemed to be a serious, man-to-man conversation. And this happened again and again, usually of a late afternoon when Simon had returned from his work. Sometimes Hannah joined them, presumably at David’s suggestion. It was all very mysterious.

But while this friendship between Simon the uncouth and David the refined was incomprehensible to the Bethsaidans, whose social status was approximately level, it was not so unaccountable as it seemed; for though aristocracy might shudder at the thought of contamination with persons a notch or two lower in the social scale, it was willing to unbend pleasantly for those who, everybody knew, had no rating at all—and would not be expecting an invitation to dinner.